a. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains generally to the field of interactive television, and specifically to the play of games via interactive television.
b. Description of the Background
Sports fans have always enjoyed watching and rooting for their favorite team and have not been able to become actively involved in the team or sport. Many fans are referred to as armchair quarterbacks or coaches. Also, many fans participate in a form of the game called fantasy sports where leagues are created and seasons played out in detail.
In the prior art, this participation is directed to a participant picking a number of sports athletes involved in a particular sport. The athletes will make up a participant's team. As each athlete is an actual player playing an actual game in an actual league, the athlete will have statistics based on his or her performance in the actual game. The participant is awarded points based on the statistics of the actual athletes that make up the participant's team.
Several interactive games based on such a fantasy league are taught in the prior art. U.S. Pat. No. 5,846,132 is an interactive game “based on an event which takes place in real time.” The event that takes place in real time is an event outside of the scope of the interactive game being played by the participants, to where the participants of the interactive game are subjected to merely guessing what happens in a particular broadcast event, such as a sporting event.
Fantasy sports, such as described above, is generally a test of a participant's intimate knowledge of the individual players in a certain sport and serve as an enhancement to the viewing experience of a sporting event. Fantasy sports, as played interactively, rely on the actions of athletes who do not participate in the interactive game and the fantasy sports are constrained around the schedules of the events that are merely tracked by the fantasy sports. Such fantasy sports rely on events that happen during the course of play of the interactive game by players other than the interactive game participants and are, in essence, elaborate and complex betting pools for the enjoyment of followers of a particular sport. Hence, these types of fantasy sports do not amount to a head-to-head sporting competition that is actually played by the participants. Further, the fantasy sports league is not broadcast to viewers other than the participants, nor would it be interesting to a casual viewer.
It would therefore be advantageous to provide interactive broadcast games whereby the participants of the games play directly against each other, the game is broadcast to viewers in addition to the participants, and the outcome of the game is determined by the actions of the participants and/or by computer generated events. Such interactive games do not rely on the prediction of outside events that occur during the course of the game and, as such, can be played at any time. It would be advantageous for the broadcast games to be interesting to the casual viewer. It would also be advantageous to provide a large selection of games so that many people would be interested in playing.